


Living with the lie

by Bdonna



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-12
Updated: 2010-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-13 15:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bdonna/pseuds/Bdonna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is it like to live every day with the lie your life has become...Gambit POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living with the lie

**Author's Note:**

> This story refers to an event that went into the X-Men’s comic-book history as the Morlock-Massacre. It contains graphic descriptions of violent scenes but not the scenes themselves. Just a glimpse into the soul of one of the participants, his guilt and how he manages to live on with it. A little character study of a person who has everything to loose, should his whole past be laid open some day.

**Living with the lie**

by Belladonna

  
 _What is it like, to live with the knowledge, having done what you did?_

I didn’t know, what he had planned, but I could’ve guessed it easily, should’ve recognized it. ‘cause what he'd asked me to do, could’ve been for that one purpose only. Maybe I’ve even suspected it and didn’t want to see.  
Because I’ve already sold my soul to the devil and what I’d needed the most was something, only he could give me.

Sometimes I wonder, if it was worth it. If there wasn’t another solution, another possibility, but for that it’s already too late. Too late for repentance, too late for everything I could possibly do now to change it.  
When I close my eyes, I see them right in front of me, see how they lie there, dying, covered with their own blood, bodies ripped apart and torn open. I hear their voices, how they plead for their lives, their screaming in fear and terror as they see this horror with their own eyes, the screams right before they breathe their last breaths and die.

Then there is silence and it is so much worse than the screams. ‘cause it is the silence of death which lies over this place. It means all life here has ended.  
The screams are no less cruel, but only living persons are able to scream and these people are all dead. Or they will be soon.

All which the dead have left are their accusing looks, and all of them are locked onto me. I feel them and the cold shudder that crawls so slowly over my back, the terror, holding my chest in its clutches and squeezes tight. I am helpless, not capable of doing anything besides staring at this slaughter. And although I know exactly that they don’t speak to me, I feel the question that is hanging on their dead lips:

Why?

Why did I betray them?  
Why have I assembled their murderers?  
Why did I lead them here right to them?  
Why am I allowing this massacre to happen?  
Why am I standing there, simply staring and doing nothing to prevent it?

I don’t know.

This is maybe the most honest thing I’ve said for a long time. Even if it is only half true.  
I know quite well why I hired these murderers and for whom, why I led their killers to them. Into the tunnels under the City, tunnels that are known only to a few people besides them.  
My life depended onto it, to receive what would be my payment for this dirty job. My life, in exchange for so many innocents. My lousy worthless life.

I can only watch this scene, ‘cause I’m helpless, frozen in terror, can’t turn my eyes away from what I’m seeing. It is too horrible but it holds my attention. I feel the knots forming deep in my stomach, feel sick but am still not capable of moving away, my fear too paralyzing.  
I’m afraid of what they’ll do to me if I’d try to stop them. Too afraid to defy them. Even now, that I see with my own eyes, for what assignment exactly I’ve hired them. I can’t stop them even with the sure evidence for the injustice happening right in front of me, I simply can’t.  
For all my power and the only thing I can do is watching in silence how they fall, one after one. How they’re being slaughtered.

Mon dieu, there is so much blood, their blood on the walls, the floor, bodies falling into huge pools of blood, that keep spreading. They’re fighting back, trying to delay the inevitable, but it is only a matter of time, ‘til they’re going to die.  
Nobody’s gonna come out here alive.  
They’re trying desperately to hold the gaping wounds in their chests and abdomens shut, but I can see inner organs, more than I’ve ever wanted to see from anybody. They drown in their own blood, men, women and...bon dieu...children.  
I feel sick just thinking of the many children that died in that night. I see their murderers, they revel in the bloodshed, how they enjoy their work of destruction and butchery. My stomach clenches tighter and I feel sicker than ever before as I watch one of the killers pull a man up at his throat. He shakes him like a doll, then cuts him open with his long claws, throwing him away, not caring if he’s still alive or not. Very satisfied with his work afterwards he licks the blood of that man off his fingers, one more, he’s killed with his bare hands that night.

I vomit on the floor, watching in silent horror the scene, but I still do nothing. I’m too much of a coward. My own worthless life too important for me to keep it than to help these innocents.

But what about them? What chance did they get, were their lives worth nothing?

It is almost like dreaming, only it is a nightmare and from this one there will be no awakening.  
Not for them and not for me.  
Their murderers are at their work with such an unnatural satisfaction, it is almost unreal. Deep in my soul I still wish all of this being anything but reality. The hand clutching to my ankle tells me otherwise and pulls me back into the harsh truth of the tunnels. Even in death that woman had her hand reach out for help, help she didn’t get. Most definitely not from me. She is dead already, the pleading look on her eyes rests on me, haunts me still in my dreams like the many others from that night in the tunnels. Disgusted I shake that hand off, but myself sickens me more than that hand around my ankle.

One of the killers sees me, sees the shock over my face whilst the others seem simply having forgotten about me and keep wrecking havoc through the tunnels. But _he_ hasn’t forgotten about me, cold eyes blazing deadly, his body bloodstained but nothing of the amount of blood is even his. It came from the many that he had already killed and a lot more blood will join the blood-soaked clothing he wears. His lips are curled back in a diabolical feral grin, it pleasures him to kill.  
I fight the urge to throw up again and desperately hope, he'll forget about me fast. But his view comes to rest on a little girl, he holds her throat with those deadly claws of his so that I can see her.  
She can't be older than four and he’s going to kill her. Just like he did with uncountable others before. Like he killed her mother before, judging by the mutilated pile of flesh that used to be a human being next to him and he wants me to watch.  
I know he can smell my fear and that gives him even more pleasure in killing that girl.  
The girl is afraid, too, having tried to hide herself from the monsters, maybe under the bodies of her parents? I don’t know, there are so many corpses lying on the floor. But from the fine nose of that born predator nobody’s able to hide.  
Under her blood-crusted red hair and the many bones that sprout from her face and body her eyes find me. They’re blue like his but hers are pleading. Still innocent despite all the horror around her. She's pleading silently for her life, having no strength left to cry, her eyes glued on me.

I don’t know why, but I cannot allow him to get her, cannot allow her to be killed. I have to save her, but my own fear holds me frozen to the spot. The murderer sees that and he laughs, a dangerous laugh. More a low deep growl like that of a wild animal. His claws are prepared to rip the girl open, how many others did he kill that way? He won’t get her, I cannot allow that to happen.  
She is silent, she doesn’t even fight, it is as if she knew, she’s going to die and has no chance of escape. It almost seems as if she’s prepared to die.

I pull myself out of my motionless state and the girl out of his grip. It is too dangerous to use my powers, I could hurt the girl and that's the last thing I would have wanted. He didn’t expect me to do that and he’s dumbfounded for a moment, enough time to clutch the girl tight and put her out of danger.  
But he recovers quickly, realizing what has happened and I’ve only got time to push the girl away from me and him before he strikes. He hits me with his claws, they rip my stomach open. I don’t feel anything, must be the shock, but something warm is now on my hands while I'm trying to stop the bleeding, my blood.

The girl is gone and that’s good. At least she will be safe from him, but what does that matter now, compared to the many others he’s killed?  
I'm sinking to my knees, the pain is not so horrible than one would think, I’m dazed from the terror I had to watch. The murderer is angry, mad with rage. I've stolen away his victim right from under his nose. He screams at me but I cannot hear him. He wants to kill me, I know it and I’m not afraid.

I want to die, I don’t deserve to live anymore.

Not after what I’ve done to the inhabitants of these tunnels.  
Around myself there are so many bodies, the walls are full of blood. The screams are fading slowly but the beast within the killer in front of me is far from satisfied. He lets me live, for the moment, lying on the floor. I know that while as much as he longs for killing me at this moment it so much more pleasures him to know that I have to watch the bloodbath further, before death relieves me from that horror.  
He wants to spare me until the last one had finally died and then kill me. If I still am alive then.  
He leaves me there in the pool of my own blood, mixing with theirs. I’m going to die, die fast or so I hope. I would kill myself if I could, but I don’t have the strength to use my powers against me. And I know I don’t deserve such an easy death, such an easy way out for my crime.

He won’t get the girl. Yes, he kills others but I know that _she_ is safe from him. When I die, I will know that she won’t be among the many others, whose deaths I’ve caused. She won't be among the faces greeting me in the afterlife, opening the doors of hell for me, ‘cause that is where I know I’m going.  
At least I was able to save one.  
I feel my conscious self slipping away fast, feel my arms and legs go numb. I'm losing blood rapidly. I hope to die soon because it is all my fault, but I don’t deserve that for all that I’ve done.

From the corner of one eye I see a movement. The girl with the bones is standing in the shadows of the tunnel and stares at the massacre.

He would get her after all and then I’m going to die for nothing. It is selfish to think so, but if I fail to save her as I’ve failed to save the others, then I am dying for nothing.  
I don’t want her to die.  
With my last strength I push myself up and stumble towards her. I take her in my arms, lift her up and hold her tight as I run away.  
He didn’t see us, caught up in the rage and fury of murder, otherwise I wouldn’t have stood any chance of escaping. She trembles with fear, me too.  
The screams fade as we’re moving further away from that horrible place, but they are burnt into my memories forever, hers maybe too.

I run, stumble forwards into the darkness of the tunnels. It doesn’t matter, ‘cause I can see perfectly in the darkness. Luckily nobody’s following us. I run forward, too afraid to stop until we finally leave the tunnels behind us. Finally I let the girl down and fall to my knees. The effort of escaping and saving that one little girl was too much for me, the blood-loss too great, being weakened by my injuries. I try to comfort, calm her. I tell her, that she’s safe now and that nobody’s gonna hurt her, but nothing I can say to her can undo the things which have happened here tonight.

Nothing more than hollow words.

She had been perfectly safe before I'd led their murderers into the tunnels. I tell her to run and to never come back here, the killers now know the tunnels and could always come back and finish their job by killing her. But she has to survive, she just has to.  
The girl runs away, looking a last time up to me. In her eyes lies the terror of the things she's been forced to watch tonight but also a grateful glance. She speaks not a single word, but with her eyes she thanks me for saving her.

Thanks me, even though it was because of me she had to watch her parents and countless others die.

She runs away, tears running down her face. I watch her as she flees this place, feel something warm running over my own cheeks, something salty. I cry too, mourn the innocents that had to die because of me. I killed them, too. Even if I didn’t touch a single one of them. Hadn't even known them. But I killed them nonetheless, it is my fault. Maybe I'm mourning my own innocence as well, dying in that tunnels with them.

The only one I could save when I'd realized my fatal mistake was that little girl and she was so grateful for it. I’ve never seen her again after that day.

I hope that she can forgive me one day, when she finds out that it was my own cowardice which killed her people.  
Because I cannot.

***********

I kneel down in the tunnels under the city and light the candle I’ve placed on the floor. In front of me, I can see the graves of the many people who died here in that night. As I close my eyes, I see their faces.  
The tunnels are now uninhabited, have been since that night. Nobody would ever live down here again. And those who had, are all dead, killed because of me.

I’m now returning to the mansion, knowing that not the Marauders but in truth _I_ am responsible for the deaths of the Morlocks. I will return to my room, a room with no mirrors.

I cannot stand watching myself in the mirror, I hate myself for that, what I’ve done and especially for what I’ve not done - helping.

I live with the knowledge of what I’ve caused, with the guilt of the many deaths on my soul and conscience.

I live with the lie.

I deny to myself what I’ve done, because only by doing that I can live on. I deny in front of my friends what I’ve done, ‘cause they’d hate me for what I’ve done.  
But they could never hate me more than I do it myself.

I go back to my home, knowing that the killed ones lost theirs through me. And their lives. I still have mine, but a part of me died in these tunnels that night right with them.

I no longer have mirrors in my room, I broke them, shattered them myself. I couldn’t bear my reflection any longer, still cannot. What I see makes me sick. The man I see in the mirror makes me sick. He reminds me of what I’ve done, what I’ve unleashed and that is something I would rather forget.  
More than that, I wish I could undo these things, but that is impossible.  
The Morlocks are dead, innocent men, women and children, killed because of me, slaughtered through my fear and they won’t live again, no matter how hard I wished for that.

I live, but part of my soul died with them.  
I live, go on every day with the knowledge of the dead and my participation in killing them, which I would so desperately forget, undo, but nothing I'd ever do would be enough.  
I live every day with the façade I’ve built before my friends and myself and every day of my life could that house of cards, that charade which makes my life, break apart and fall down.  
I live with the guilt and the fear of what will be, when that house of cards comes down and of what will be after that. I know they won’t forgive me.  
Why should they, I cannot even do that myself. And I hate myself for that, for what I’ve done, my cowardice sickens me. They would reject me and I know, I deserve nothing better. I’m scum, worse than that. I can never atone for what I’ve done, for what I’ve done is inexcusable.

I seek forgiveness, but those who can forgive me are all dead. I’m doing everything to make amends, but deep within my soul I know, that for penance and forgiveness it is already too late. So I live on everyday, seeking penance and peace I know I’ll never find. The others don’t know my reasons for doing what I do and I desperately try to prevent them from finding out the real reason to my search for peace and forgiveness.  
I pray to a god I long stopped believing in that they’ll never find out.

I try so hard to live a better life, to not repeat the sins of my past and though I know that I don’t deserve their friendship, it is the only thing that keeps me going on.

Living every day with the lie that is my life.

(inspired by X-Men #58, pages 1-8)

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first fanfic ever, originally written and posted in 2001 as translation from German to English. For this posting I revised it by typo and grammar correction.


End file.
